Kominicki: This guy never said, ‘Let’s do lunch’

It’s the end of I’m Really Going to Lose Weight This Year Week, a fitting time to consider the contributions of Ancel Keys, inventor of the Army K ration, promoter of the Mediterranean Diet and director of a 1940s government program that starved conscientious objectors.

Here’s the skinny:

Born in Colorado Springs in 1904 – his mother’s brother was silent film star Lon Chaney – Keys grew up in Northern California, where he was identified as one of area’s 1,528 most intellectually promising students by eugenicist Lewis Terman.

Gifted, yes, but flighty: Keys dropped out of high school to pursue such jobs as shoveling bat guano from caves in Arizona and serving as a powder monkey in a Colorado mine. He eventually finished his secondary education and began studying chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, but left school again to work as an oiler on a steam cruise to China.

Returning to Berkeley, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science, added a master’s in zoology then joined a management training program at Woolworth’s, which he dropped after realizing retail was a lot like his previous work in caves. By 1936, he’d earned a doctorate in oceanography, worked at a zoological lab in Copenhagen, taught at Harvard, studied the effects of high altitude sickness in the Andes and was awarded a second doctorate, in physiology, from Cambridge.

Too bad this was before sky miles.

By the end of the 1930s, Keys was running the physiology program at the University of Minnesota, operating from a research laboratory built under the school’s football stadium. The military came calling soon after with a request for a high-protein ration that could be used by paratroopers and front-line troops.

Keys bought the initial ingredients at Witt’s, the Twin Cities’ top market in those days, and packaged them in waxed boxes supplied by a company called Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein, best known for a product called Cracker Jack. The contents – biscuits, dried sausage, hard candy and chocolate – totaled 3,200 calories, weighed 28 ounces and fit easily into the pocket of a combat uniform.

Though nutritious, taste was another matter: U.S. troops commonly referred to the new K rations as Hitler’s Revenge.

In 1944, expecting eventual victory in Europe, U.S. government officials began worrying about feeding post-war civilian populations and turned once more to their contact in Minnesota. The question centered on how little food a human could get by on, and for how long.

Known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, Keys’ yearlong study involved 36 volunteer conscientious objectors, mostly Quakers, Mennonites and members of the Church of the Brethren. It began with a 12-week control period that studied the subjects’ physiological and psychological health, then a 24-week starvation phase, during which caloric intake was drastically reduced in an effort to cut pre-test body weight by at least 25 percent. Phase 3 involved 20 weeks of “renourishment.”

During the middle six months, test subjects were allowed an average 1,560 calories daily, usually from foods that were expected to be readily available in post-war Europe: potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, brown bread and macaroni. Keys’ subjects were also expected to march around steadily – at least 22 miles a week – and were tested for strict adherence to an established weight-loss curve. Those who didn’t drop pounds as fast as others, in other words, had their calories cut.

One comment

My lifelong formula for weight control is
to eat the amount of calories required to
maintain my desired weight. There is no need
for diet food, just food that I eat consistently
over long periods of time to stay at my desired
weight. Try it. It works!
– David C Pinkowitz . . http://www.dcpmarketing.com